12 July 2018

Curtis Brown Creative launches three new children’s picture book courses

Sarah McIntyre and David O'Connell, photo by Dave Warren

by Katie Smart
Course News, Events

Some of you may have been wondering what these teaser pictures posted on our Twitter this week were about, well now we’re excited to finally let the cat out of the bag …

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve been working with children’s author-illustrators: Sarah McIntyre and David O’Connell (above), to create 3 brand-new online courses. Following on from our popular six-week online novel writing courses (Starting to Write Your Novel, Write to the End of Your Novel and Edit & Pitch Your Novel) we are launching 3 online courses designed for budding writers and artists who want to learn a little more about the world of children’s picture books: how you get them written and illustrated, but also how you get them published commercially.

The illustration course is led by Sarah McIntyre, a well established artist and writer, whose solo picture books include There’s a Shark in the Bath, Dinosaur Firefighters, and The New Neighbours – and who has worked with writers like Giles Andreae, Gillian Rogerson, and Alan MacDonald.

David O’Connell, Sarah’s friend and collaborator, leads the writing course. His first children’s picture book, Monster & Chips, came out in 2013, and he worked with Sarah on Jampires. He has also collaborated with Sam Watkins, Francesca Gambatesa and Tom Nicoll. His latest series is the Dundoodle Mysteries, illustrated by Claire Powell.

Each course features purpose-written and filmed teaching videos, plus specially filmed conversations between Sarah and David about their creative collaboration, their inspiration, and how they work with publishers. And both courses offer extensive and practical teaching notes, tasks and a forum to share work.

These courses are suitable for complete beginners, but also for people in need of some extra know-how to succeed in finding a publisher for their work. They’ll also be useful for artists, illustrators and writers who have been working in other areas and forms but now want to move across to work on books for young children.